ISPS HANDA PGA Tour of Australasia Tournaments Manager Graeme Scott is in the thick of it as Rules Official at the WGC Bridgestone Invitational this week. Check out Scotty’s day on course following round one of the event.

WGC Bridgestone Invitational – Thursday 3 August

The down side of moving the tee times forward for Thursday and Friday is that we had to be at the course at 6.30am this morning. However, this is never really an issue for me as my sleeping patterns during a tournament week are completely irregular and I am generally wide awake by 4.30am with a number of thoughts buzzing around in my head.

Being awake at this time did give me the chance to catch up on a number of emails and keep on top of the other tournaments coming up.

Arriving on course at 6.30am gave me the chance to grab some breakfast before heading out onto the front-9 to complete my set up check. It was a bit damp and sticky this morning and there was a light dew lying on the fairways. The greens looked absolutely fantastic and I had nothing to report back to Slugger or the course staff in respect to issues that needed addressing.

Once my checks were completed I headed down to my position near 4 green. It wasn’t too long before I picked up a call for a ruling at drive length on 4. Scott Hend had gone right off the tee and was lying close to a tree. He wanted confirmation that he was allowed to probe around his ball with a tee to check if there was a tree root under his strike area. I advised him that he could as long as he did not improve his lie or area of intended swing.

As the front-9 groups filed through we started to see the pace of play become progressively worse, nothing drastic but we crept towards plus 10. The main reason for this was that the beautiful benign conditions meant that most players could reach the par5 second hole in two and this created a 5 minute wait in the fairway. Fortunately the par5 fifth hole seemed to be playing under time and this allowed us to make up some time. My next two rulings were both on hole 6 but were very different.

A ball had come to rest almost bang in the centre of the cart path and he was unsure which side to go to for his nearest point of relief as the tees that he had placed in the ground looked almost equidistant from the ball. Although I advised him that his NPOR was on the fairway side of the hole, the player was not convinced and asked that I recheck it with a string line. This I did and it confirmed my earlier decision. In view of the chunky rough in the area that he would be required to drop in, the player elected to play the ball as it lay on the artificial path.

The next call was to the 6^th teeing ground. When you get a call for a teeing ground your mind starts racing in regards to what the problem could be, In this case a screw had become loose in a player’s driver and he wanted confirmation that he could re-tighten it.

As the morning progressed the breeze started to lift a little and this began to make the course more testing. The forecast still showed that we were on target for storms around 2.30pm and so it was important to ensure that the field stayed in position so that we could clear the course by that time.

My next ruling involved a player’s ball moving after he removed a gallery stake left of 4 green. It took a bit of time to establish all the facts but the ruling was actually quite straight forward in that the player was required to replace the ball without penalty.

Although the groups from the back-9 were a little over time they were all in position and play moved pretty smoothly.

My final ruling for the day involved a player whose ball had come to rest in the rough right of hole 6, close to a tree. A series of three irrigation boxes were situated between the ball and the hole and the player wanted to claim intervention relief. While the boxes are obstructions, they are not Temporary Immovable Obstructions as they are located on the course all the time and not just for the tournament week. Relief was denied and this left the player with a very tricky recovery shot.

It was a big relief to get all the players in the house as storm cells were popping up on the radar around Akron. As it transpired they all skirted around the course thus providing us with a dry afternoon. However, we are sitting on a 90% chance of storms for tomorrow and so the challenge will be to once again get the field through before the storms hit us.

It is a tight leaderboard after day one but the predicted showers and storms for tomorrow may see someone jump out of the pack because they handle to conditions better than everyone else. Let’s hope the weather is kind to us!!